


Axis Mundi and Allies

by LiteraryMinion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergence, Season 9
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2017-12-12 16:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiteraryMinion/pseuds/LiteraryMinion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash, monitoring heaven as per usual, notices something amiss. Namely, angels falling. Fortunately, there are plenty of dead hunters in heaven to take up the call and find out what's wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have a very bad habit of not finishing leisure activities, particularly fanfic. I have a decent outline of this story with some interesting ideas and new creatures/plot devices, but I probably won't finish it, so if you are the kind of person who gets frustrated by people not finishing their fic, you may want to save yourself some time.
> 
> Also, I know I'm not the only person who had this idea (or something very similar). It just seems like the obvious story to tell after the season 8 finale.

In a run-down roadhouse on a road no one travelled, there lived (or perhaps more accurately, after-lived) a mean old coot with a shotgun and a wardrobe full of flannel. His name was Bobby Singer, and after a life spent hunting down monsters, demons, and heaven-sent douchebags, the afterlife was not suiting him well, thank you very much. It was far too boring.

That wasn’t to say it had no perks; reliving memories of his wife and his boys was great. Problem was, they were just memories, and that ain’t no substitute for the real thing.

Bobby sat on a barstool in the Harvelle’s roadhouse-in-the-sky. No hunters passed through anymore, except for the echoes of another lifetime and the select few who knew how to cross the borders in heaven. Ash, the greatest mulletted genius the world had ever known, had gathered together a small band of old friends for a good time in the ever-after.

There was Ellen Harvelle, who greatly appreciated the self-cleaning glasses behind the bar; she slid one full of whiskey down to Bobby’s end and cracked open a beer bottle for her baby, Jo. Jo had probably adjusted the best out of all of them. It helped that Ash had been able to track down Mr. William Harvelle, whom she hadn’t seen since she was seven. Rufus had taken a break from reminiscing to have a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, which, to his eternal good fortune, was just like the real thing down below.

Still, even among friends, Bobby was dissatisfied. Ash hadn’t yet located Mrs. Singer, the boys were still downstairs trying to shut up the gates of Hell, and he was stuck here with nothing to do but drink. So drink he did.

“What you grumblin’ about, Bobby?” Rufus said from the other end of the bar next to Jo. “This place is nice. All the comforts of home and no monsters. And all your old buddies, too.”

“Can it, Rufus,” Bobby grouched. He took a swig of his whiskey. “Ellen? Just give me the whole bottle.”

“No.”

“I ain’t gonna wreck my liver, you know.”

Ellen stared him down. “No.”

“Listen to the woman, Singer,” Bill Harvelle threw in nonchalantly from the corner by the jukebox. He had his feet propped up on the seat across from him, and he tipped the chair back to teeter on its back legs. The memories of two customers sat at a table nearby, and Bill lazily tossed a peanut shell through one of them, right between the eyes.

“I ain’t felt this useless since I was in that damn chair,” Bobby grumbled back. “I need as much as I can drink.”

“Oh, don’t worry, those boys’ll be back. Again,” Ash said, not glancing up from his laptop. He had a nice setup, using the pool table as a desk, with some papers and a beer can crowding his laptop.

“Any word on the Mrs.?” Bobby asked hopefully.

“Nah, sorry, man.”

Bobby slouched over his whiskey in a huff.

But over by the pool table, Ash tapped away at his keyboard. His eyes narrowed slowly. “What the hell…”

In one of his windows, his angelic GPS appeared to be going haywire. After a few adjustments to make sure nothing was wrong with the program, he looked back at his angel tracker. “The _hell_ …”

“Something wrong?” Jo asked, as she, Rufus, and Ellen turned their attention to him.

“Something.”

“Is it the Winchester tracker?” Ellen asked.

“Nah, the angel tracker. Something’s… Ho-ly _shit_ ,” he declared, his arms spreading away from the laptop as he pulled away from it in shock.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jo pressed, hopping off her barstool. She and Rufus came around and huddled near Ash, the better to see the screen. Little dots on what looked like a map were changing color, from blue to red, then disappearing altogether. The numbers to the side of the window were rapidly rising and falling. The dots were everywhere, scattered across the map, along with red dots and little black boundaries like no city, state, or country they’d ever seen.

“The angels. They’re not registering as angels anymore,” Ash said, running a hand through his mullet. “Program’s fine, but this is messed up.”

“What does that mean?” Ellen asked, leaning over the bar.

Bobby and Bill Harvelle approached the pool table, anxious now to get closer to the action.

“See these numbers?” Ash directed their attention to the side of the screen. “Those are angels, those are humans. And this,” he said, clicking a new window, “this isn’t exact,” he explained, “I can’t ID everybody yet, and the numbers are rough estimates in the thousands, but this is entry vs. exit. Exit’s pretty rare. Just your occasional reincarnated soul, angels leaving…” he paused. “Winchesters,” he said with an eyeroll.

“Get to the point, idjit,” Bobby grouched.

“Thousands,” Rufus said slowly, taking in the map. “That’s a lot of exits. What’s that mean?”

“Well, given the numbers, I mean… Angels dropping, registering as human, exit number skyrocketing…” He waved his arms, trying to process it. “Looks like they’re falling.”

“Falling?” Bobby repeated in bewilderment. “In the _thousands_? I thought Anna said that was like cuttin’ out your own kidney! Why the hell would they do it in the thousands?”

“Good question,” Ash replied. He refocused on the laptop, bringing up another window; this one charted angelic frequencies. He’d shown it to the boys once, noting he was fluent in the Enochian they thought sounded like nothing more than ringing in their ears. “Well, boys and girls, let’s see what’s on angel radio,” he said, cracking his knuckles before diving in.

The group exchanged pointed looks. “You got more experience with angels than we do,” Rufus said with a nod to Bobby. “You got any idea what’s going on?”

“Well I ain’t exactly a specialist,” Bobby said. “But it’s not something they’d do for kicks. Penalty’s supposed to be death.”

“We looking at some kind of spell, then?” Bill asked, folding his arms as he interposed himself between Rufus and Bobby. He was a tall man, easily as tall as Rufus, and he had a certain air of reserve to him. He was habitually composed and hard to shake. He had dark hair now, with no hint of the bright blond he’d been as a child, and no hint of the gray he never got to earn. He had the same oval face as Jo, and the same flannel that one would almost think was a hunter uniform.

“Well, balls. It’d have to be.” Bobby sighed. “We should head back to my heaven, check out my library. I’ve got a few memories in there.” He shook his head. “I just hope Cas is alright. Idjit’s like family, but damn if he don’t get himself into trouble a lot. Must’ve learned it from the boys,” he snorted.

Ash leaned back, away from his laptop. He sighed. “Well,” he began slowly, “angel radio’s out of commission. Angels have left the building.” His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “’Cept one,” he said, leaning in again, zooming in on his map.

“Any idea who?” Rufus asked.

“Nah, not that specific yet. I’ve got tabs on a couple of ‘em, but not many. I’m working on it,” he added defensively. “What I _can_ tell you is his location. It’s a bit of a walk,” he said with a shrug.

“Well, where is he?” Ellen demanded.

“Across heaven, this kind of no-man’s land. Nothing special, from the looks of it. Kinda small. It’s a couple miles from the garden,” he added, popping open a can of beer.

“Well,” Rufus sighed. “Careful what you wish for, Bobby. Looks like we got ourselves a hunt.”

“Where do we look first? I mean, we can’t just confront this angel right off, can we? He’s probably responsible,” Jo argued.

“The garden,” Bill and Ellen said together.

Ellen nodded. “It’s the root of all creation, right? Might be able to find something to help us. Angel blade, maybe? If nothing else, it'll get us closer to the angel without getting too close.”

“I’ve got a shortcut to get to the garden, but from there you’ll have to use the Axis Mundi,” Ash replied.

“Doesn’t that mean passing through other people’s heavens?” Jo said worriedly.

“Possibly,” Ash confirmed. “But you stick to the road and it shouldn’t be much of a problem. No angels to monitor the thing now. ‘Cept the one, and we don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s probably a little busy.”

“You said he’s hanging out in some no-man’s land. That make any sense to you?” Bill asked. “If he’s the only one still up here, he’s probably responsible somehow, but what’s the deal with this little strip of land? What is it?”

“Don’t know. Maybe it’s a disguise for something,” Ash said, examining his angel tracker again.

“Command Center?” Bill suggested.

“It’s possible,” Ash agreed. “But we can’t know ‘til we check it out.”

“Alright. I’ll check my library, and we meet back here,” Bobby said.

“And we’re off to see the wizard!” Ash snarked.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been sitting on this a while; if I wait until the whole fic is done, it'll likely never go up. I do have a tiny bit of chapter 3 started, but I'm likely to procrastinate on that, too. Constructive criticism is welcome.

_Balls_.

Bobby glared down at yet another useless book. He didn’t know why he’d expected such an obscurely powerful spell to be somewhere in the vast account of human knowledge, let alone in his personal library. That wasn’t the kind of thing angels would let slip to the mud-monkeys, was it?  But then, they’d managed to find a spell on earth that could trap and enslave Death himself, so maybe he’d gotten a bit spoiled.

At any rate, he was having no such luck this time. He sighed and grabbed his duffel and backpack. He headed for the front door and pulled out the chalk Ash had loaned him. The scribbles were no more complicated than your average demon trap or angel warding, but Bobby couldn’t help his irritation at this shitty house arrest crap in paradise and the fact that he even _needed_ a special pass to get around.

He slipped through the door into the dimly-lit roadhouse, where the group was gearing up for a long trip.

“Get lost in the powder room?” Rufus quipped.

Bobby rolled his eyes. “I got nothin’ in terms of spells. Might be on one of those tablets the boys mentioned, but it ain’t in my books.”

“That’s alright,” said a grim-faced Bill. He loaded his rifle with slow and steady hands while his wife watched in silence, comparing his every move to those of the blonde girl at his side. It was strange to see, and unsettling in a mother’s chest, watching father and daughter prepare for a hunt that may become a battle; it wasn’t exactly proper quality time. Though she wouldn’t have admitted it, the worst of it was in the little things; the shape of the faces and the identical expressions of suicidal determination, that little glint of concealed vulnerability in their eyes, and the methodical, careful, deliberate way of checking each weapon and item before it was packed.

“Hey,” said Bobby. “You comin’ with?”

“Course,” Ellen replied, shaking off the lurking fear."Not afraid of a few daisies," she snarked.

"Yeah, well, it ain't exactly your run-of-the-mill garden, is it?" Bobby replied.

"Alright, amigos!" Ash declared, hands over his head as he stood behind the pool table and waited for their attention. Satisfied, he sniffed once, and grabbed his belt buckle. "We are about to embark on the gnarliest acid-trip of a hunt you have ever experienced. Please keep all hands, arms—both flesh and weaponry—" he clarified, "—under control at all times. It is not a small world after all, and our neighbors will not necessarily be happy to see us. Breaking into the penthouse is generally frowned upon," he explained. "And with the landlords gone, there might not be anyone to clean up any rowdy house parties, you know what I mean?"

"We're ready. Just get this show on the road," Rufus snapped.

"Alright." Ash turned to the door at his right, scooping up his backpack and gear. He promptly scribbled away at the door as the hunting party came to cluster around him, all clutching their weapons. Bobby was, in spite of himself, feeling just a tad bit invigorated. Being useful just sat well with him. Of course, if he were being completely honest with himself, he would've realized that some small part of him was itching to see THE garden. Sure, he'd heard a little about it from Sam and Dean, but their garden was the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. If there was one supernatural piece of crap he'd actually pay to see, the Garden-with-a-capital-G was it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your butts!" Ash proclaimed. He swung the door open and rushed through, with Bill and Ellen close behind. Jo followed suit with Rufus and Bobby bringing up the rear, guns out.

The hunters froze.

The tiny assemblage gazed in awe.

A vast white space spread out before them, miles upon miles in every direction but for the tiny wooden door that stood open behind them, a pathetic speck in the great white expanse. They lowered their weapons as they slowly spread out. A spongy cushion of white was beneath their feet, firmer than mud but a tad bouncy like the safety foam one might find in a gymnastics training room. From it grew plants like nothing on earth, a bewitching wilderness of twisting shapes in colors they ought not to be.

“Fuckin’ _Narnia_ , man!” Ash whispered breathlessly.

Jo crept slowly toward a crystalline, treelike structure; it reached just a foot or so higher than herself, and seemed to be made of little diamond-shaped cells. The whole of it looked like a sculpture of a double-helix, with smaller helices somehow branching out of it, and the light played off it in navy blue, lime green, and a shade of lavender. Jo reached out to touch it, and jerked her hand back as the thing bent away from her touch as though stung. Low trilling emanated from it, barely audible to Jo, who clutched her gun in response and aimed it at the plant. The plant felt supple to the touch, not at all like the rock formation it appeared to be. It freaked her out.

"Ho-ly shit!" Bobby whispered. He stared up at the wide, open white sky above them. A light with no apparent source filled it, from edge to unseen edge, as though the sky itself were a swath of light. Not a cloud was to be seen; perhaps no water was needed here. The stray thought shot through his mind, _What the hell did Joshua mean he "trimmed the hedges?" The hell were they even growing here?_

Rufus was even less accepting than the others. With his shotgun still trained on it, he circled a floating freakshow of a plant. In his humble opinion it was best described as a demonic tumbleweed. Thin pinkish-orange vines twisted in on themselves in a three-foot-wide tangled mass around a tiny one-inch core of pale blue. The tiny blue core pulsed every few seconds and emitted a purplish glow with each one. It hovered at least two feet off the ground for no evident reason.

Ash whistled as he eyeballed a ditch filled with tiny, brilliant blue pustule-like creatures growing in concentric circles. A sunny yellow cup-like layer with black spots rose out of the blue bumps, and from inside the cups a fluffy white substance rose like cotton, swirling at least a few inches high. Ash bent down to examine them closer, and gently squeezed one of the little cups.

Something viscous, creamy, and dark blue ejected itself onto Ash's face, accompanied by a tiny, high-pitched squeal. Whatever it was, at least it smelled pretty good; it was sweet and tangy like some berry-flavored lemonade. Maybe he could find a way to get high on it later.

"I thought we were s'posed to see what we wanted to here," Bobby said at last, directing his question at Ash.

"Welp," Ash said, licking the weird blue cream off his lips and finding it sweet, "don't usually get more than one or two people in here at a time, and the gardener's gone." He sat in thought for a moment. "Maybe this is the default setting."

"So this is what the garden actually looks like?" Bill asked, glaring suspiciously at Ash's soon-to-be-favorite drug.

"Possibly," Ash replied.

"The hell kind of garden is this?" Rufus demanded with just a tad bit of hysteria creeping into his voice.

"THE garden," Bill replied solemnly, resting the barrel of his rifle against his shoulder. He looked around him again, trying to gaze off into a distance obscured by a botanical fever-dream. He shook his head. "Is this what God made the world with?"

"Affirmative," Ash said. He pulled his laptop out of his bag, and pulled up his map. "Now then. Guy in charge of the garden's supposed to be this angel, Joshua. No sign of him at the moment; he probably fell with the rest of 'em. We've got to orient ourselves toward this no-man's land with the flying buttmonkey."

"Whoa, we have to navigate this shit?" Jo said, panicking.

"Not to worry, I have many skills," Ash said with a smirk and a wink.

"Is there anything here we can use as a weapon against angels?" Ellen asked. She stood close to her husband with one eye on her baby and the other on Ash. She'd never been into hunting; always left it to the actual hunters until her baby dragged her into it. Her only present consolation amid the weirdness was the lack of immediate danger. This was not the kind of family bonding she’d hoped for in paradise.

"Well," Ash said, tapping away at his keyboard, "could take some time to figure out which stuff is useful in what way. But if you could figure out which stuff he made angels with, that'd probably be a start."

"And how the hell are we supposed to do that?" Bobby snapped.

Ash paused, scratching his chin with one finger. "Probably have to find a griffin."

"A what?" Jo asked.

"Griffin. It's mythical. Part eagle, part lion. Supposed to guard treasure, used in lots of coats of arms. But they don't exist," Bill added, glaring at Ash.

"Not on earth they don't," Ash said nonchalantly. He was mostly ignoring them now, focused on his program and wiping the cream off his face so he could lick it off his fingers. It had smeared around his face to paint a clown’s imitation of Braveheart makeup, made even worse by his mullet.

"Why would heaven have griffins?" Bill pressed. He drew closer to Ash, looming over him where he sat.

"Lots of stuff," Ash said casually. "Guarding stuff. Like stuff that can kill angels, for example."

"So we find a griffin, we find the stuff that matters," Rufus summarized. "What else do we know about 'em?"

"They're like the heaven equivalent of hellhounds," said Ash. "'Cept they don't usually hunt humans. The angels are supposed to give them orders, and they're gone. They guard whatever they're told to guard. Obviously the entire garden isn't considered worthy of guarding, but if the angels think something could kill them, you can bet your afterlife penthouse you'll find griffins there."

"How big are they?" Ellen asked.

"They're supposed to eat horses," Bill said dryly.

Bobby and Rufus exchanged wide-eyed looks.

"Well, balls."

"And you thought you wanted some action," Rufus rubbed it in.

"Eat me," Bobby retorted.

"Nah, I'll leave that to the griffins," Rufus smirked.

"Anybody bring a cell phone?" Ash asked.

The whole hunting party stared at him in bewilderment, though he appeared not to notice or care.

"Yeah," Bobby said. "Why?"

"Like I said, griffins take orders from the flying monkeys. I've got some recordings of angels blabbing Enochian. You might be able to find some griffins using that."

"We draw them in, we follow them home," Bill summarized.

"Well, great, but how do we actually get the stuff they're guarding?" Bobby asked.

"Don't look at me, I don't hunt the shit," Ash said dismissively. "That's YOUR department." He promptly refocused on his laptop. "Now, if you don't mind, I best get started on the navigating. Let me know when you bitches get the necessaries."

The hunting party lingered awkwardly like sixth-graders at their first school dance. After what seemed an eternity, they decided to split up. Ash transferred the angel recordings onto Bobby’s and Rufus’ cell phones, and Bobby gave his to Ellen. Rufus and Bobby headed off into a forest of madmen’s topiaries.

“Didn’t think I’d be doing this _after_ death,” Jo said quietly, staring off into the distance at a hill covered in a sky-blue thicket.

“Hoped you wouldn’t be doing this _ever_ ,” Ellen replied casually.

Jo cast a guarded glance at her mother, who met her gaze. The bags under the older woman’s eyes held no accusation, but rather the weariness of long-accepted defeat. Jo shot her a crooked smile, with only a trace of her guilt sneaking into it. You didn’t talk about your fuck-ups in heaven. The mandatory hush of this unspoken rule had long since fallen over the little voice inside that said she’d killed her mother, crushed her hopes, dragged her into the fray. In heaven, you could convince yourself that those things didn’t matter, because, hey, you weren’t paying for them, were you? Couldn’t fix them, either. What was the point?

But it was still there. It was waiting. And for once it had a golden opportunity.

“Well?” Bill said, swinging his bag up onto his shoulder. “Ladies first.” He gestured out to the field.

Armed and ready, the hunters set out in God’s country.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welp. I'd edit more, but I'm surprised I even finished this chapter.
> 
> Introducing the griffin! Yay???

Rufus and Bobby sloshed through the turquoise water (or watery fluid, perhaps), knocking little neon-purple seaweeds out of their path. A canopy of silver diamond-shaped leaves obscured the brilliant white sky, but the light filtered down and had an almost blinding effect as the water and the leaves mirrored each other, the light frolicking back and forth between them.

They’d been traipsing through the swamp for nearly an hour. Aside from one unnecessary weapons discharge (it was _looking_ at them, Rufus insisted) nothing too exciting had crossed their path. There was no word yet from the others, and no sign of any griffins or sentient creatures.

But at last, the pair neared a break in the trees, and trudged their way out of the water and onto solid ground. Bobby and Rufus shot each other nervous glances, and the tips of their guns followed their eyes up, up, up at the vines dangling straight out of the sky with nothing to fix them there.

Bobby approached one first, creeping forward with his gun still at the ready. Upon closer inspection, he found a thin, flaky white substance growing on the vines, almost giving the appearance of fur. He plucked a few, turning them slowly in his fingers. He handed them off to Rufus, who eyed them skeptically before accepting.

Rufus frowned. Slowly, he raised it to his face and sniffed. He glared up at the living stalactites with all the seriousness of a coroner. “No…”

Bobby’s head snapped to face him. “What is it?”

To Bobby’s astonishment, Rufus put the flakes in his mouth. He turned them over once, seeming to savor them. Suddenly he smiled, a little chuckle escaping him. “Bobby, ain’t you ever read your Bible? I know our book is in there.”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “What d’ya mean?”

“That’s manna. As in, manna from heaven.”

Bobby lowered his gun. “What, like the food?”

“Yeah, like the food!” Rufus said with an earnest chuckle. “Whole field of it! Look at that! Falling out of the sky. Growing out of the sky, more like. Ha ha!”

Bobby glared out at the curtains of vines. He rolled his eyes and pushed his way past a few, whacking them out of the way in his irritation.

“Well alright, grump-a-lump,” Rufus muttered. He took a few long strides to catch up to his partner.

 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the garden, the Harvelles were attempting (somewhat successfully) to navigate through a field of trampoline-like mushrooms ranging in size from a foot high to several feet above their heads; most of the caps were somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 feet in diameter. Bill was understandably miffed at the undignified suggestion of bouncing along like a five-year-old on the new couch, but carefully walking through it was just taking too damn long, Ellen insisted.

"Dad, can we just go? Come on, we might as well have a little fun, right?" said Jo.

Bill glared at her. "Fun? Joanna Beth, I thought you of all people understood what hunting meant. I don't even want to think about what happens to people who die in heaven."

Jo rolled her eyes. His words may have hit their mark, but she wasn't about to say so. She fingered the barrel of her gun and tossed her hair to one side, dismissing the unbidden thoughts of what may come. "Look, if we can just make it to those..." she waved her hand, searching for a description. "Psychedelic bubble-webs, the mushrooms end. Then you won't have to bounce, okay?"

Bill glanced up ahead. The webs weren't actually webs; they looked like bubble mixture still in the blowing-hoop, but the colors were actually yarn-like veins in translucent leaves dangling from a mountainous tree stretching into the sky and out of sight.

Bill frowned. "We never speak of this again," he huffed.

Ellen let out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes at her husband. She'd forgotten in the interim what a stuck-up ass he could be. Maybe that was for the best; no one wants to remember the bad stuff about you when you're gone. You just want to remember the good stuff so clearly you could replay it like a video in your head at will.

She followed along, bouncing behind the others on the springy mushrooms, looking for all the world like Neil Armstrong trying to walk on the moon. She couldn't help but laugh.

Naturally, Bill assumed it was directed at him, and tried to turn and glare at her. This was a terrible plan on his part, which resulted in stumbling and landing flat on his face, bouncing twice, and scaring the crap out of everyone when the gun went off.

"DAD?" Jo shouted, bouncing to a halt and trying to turn around.

Ellen's face was caught between laughter and shock. She had frozen in place, unsure of what to do. "Bill?"

He righted himself, looking pissed but unscathed by his devious fungal enemies.

Little shudders went through Ellen's back as she tried to suppress the chuckle. "Oh, Bill. Did the mushroom monsters get you, Honey?"

"We didn't have to go this way. We could've looked elsewhere," Bill snapped. "What the hell is gonna hide in an open field, Ellen?"

"Maybe the trampolines trip up potential invaders," she snarked.

"Very funny, Ellen," he snapped. "If you would just—"

The rustling in the distance was far too loud. The psychedelic leaves they'd been heading for now started to move, far quicker than any of the company would've liked. In fact, there were too many of those huge leaves moving, presumably because of the huge thing that shot out of them into the sky overhead.

"Holy—" Ellen started.

The enormous creature soared over them, screeching in a monstrous ear-shattering pitch. It was easily the size of a flying elephant, but this Dumbo was by no means friendly. Its mammoth talons were over a foot long, and its plumage was a dazzling combination of reds, oranges, and gold, making it seem like a gigantic fireball tearing through the sky. Its beak had a wicked curve ideal for ripping flesh, and a flap of its massive wings from overhead was so powerful that the gust of air knocked all the hunters flat.

As the hunters struggled to their feet, the griffin swooped back in, front talons raised and its beak open wide.

Jo’s eyes darted around wildly, calculating the next move. Her heart pounded faster as she spotted her weapon of choice and the thought clicked. She scrambled up on top of one of the giant mushrooms and waved her arms.

"Hey, Big Bird! How 'bout some white meat?!" she screamed. She fired a shot at its wing, but only grazed the outer feathers.

"JO!" Ellen screamed. "Get down from there!"

But Jo stared the beast down in its approach. It hurtled toward her like a meteor, dive-bombing straight down with its coal-black eyes fixed on her.

As the talons came within a few feet, Jo dived over the side of the mushroom and watched the griffin bounce off it up into the sky, screeching in discombobulated rage.

"Run for it!" Bill yelled.

"Hell no!" Jo yelled back, and she raised her gun and blasted the tumbling predator in the chest.

"Ash, we found the griffin!" Ellen barked into her cell, ducking between mushrooms with a pistol in her other hand.

"MOVE!" Bill shouted, yanking Jo's arm and manhandling her into cover.

"Ash! Do you hear me?!" Ellen demanded again. "We're in some kind of a field of giant mushrooms. The griffin came out of the trees. It's-- HIT THE DIRT!" she screamed.

The hunters dived for cover again as lightning shot from the griffin's open beak with a thunderous roar. Between the Harvelles, several mushrooms at least six feet high sizzled, charred black or disintegrating as the hunters watched in horror.

"ASH! DID YOU FORGET TO MENTION SOMETHING?" Ellen shouted.

"No, but the devil is in the details," Ash replied.

"Where the _hell_ are the others?" Bill called out to her.

"Where are they?" Ellen repeated into the phone, as they all got up and hustled across the field.

"Look, I'll call Bobby and Rufus, but I'm onto something. Just hang on, okay?"

"What do you mean _you’re_ onto something?" Ellen snapped. She ducked and weaved in between mushroom stalks, glancing between here and there to catch glimpses of the predator hot on their trail. A few yards off she could hear her family stomping through the undergrowth. Bill had pulled out his machete and was hacking away madly at whatever crossed their path.

"I'm sending help, okay?" Ash repeated. "Just hang in there."

"Ash? ASH!"

The line went dead.


End file.
